HEVC Advance Announces 'Royalty Free' HEVC Software

BOSTON, Nov. 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- HEVC Advance, an independent licensing administrator, today announced a major software policy initiative to rapidly accelerate widespread HEVC/UHD adoption in consumer mobile devices and personal computers. Under the software initiative, HEVC Advance will not seek a license or royalties on HEVC functionality implemented in application layer software downloaded to mobile devices or personal computers after the initial sale of the device, where the HEVC encoding or decoding is fully executed in software on a general purpose CPU. Examples of the types of software within the policy include browsers, media players and various software applications.

According to Peter Moller, CEO of HEVC Advance, "We are very pleased to offer this initiative. A critical goal of HEVC Advance is to encourage widespread adoption of HEVC/UHD technology in consumer devices. While HEVC technology implemented in specialized hardware circuitry provides the best and most efficient user experience, there are millions of existing mobile devices and personal computers that do not have HEVC hardware capability. Our initiative is tailored to enable software app and browser providers to include HEVC capability in their software products so that everyone can enjoy HEVC/UHD video today. I'd like to specifically thank Tom Vaughan at MulticoreWare for his guidance in our development of this initiative."

Tom Vaughan, VP and GM of Video at MulticoreWare remarked: "We have invested heavily in the development of our HEVC codecs and associated libraries. From the start, HEVC Advance worked very hard to listen, understand and develop solutions to respond to the market's concerns about HEVC Adoption. We are thankful for their efforts and believe this initiative will encourage and facilitate software developers, web service and content providers, mobile device manufacturers and others to take advantage of the tremendous competitive advantage that HEVC provides as quickly as possible."

Subject to certain exceptions/conditions. Full details on the software policy initiative are available on the HEVC Advance website: http://hevcadvance.com

About the HEVC Advance Licensing Program In addition to the above described software initiative, HEVC Advance offers incentives to encourage consumer device manufacturers to include HEVC functionality at initial sale. For example, HEVC Advance only seeks one device royalty for a consumer device, even if that device includes multiple HEVC decoders or encoders at the time of the initial sale (subject to limited exceptions). Therefore, any number of HEVC software products may be included in a consumer device at initial sale without incurring additional royalties, providing the applicable device royalty has been (or will be) paid by the consumer device manufacturer. In addition, even after initial sale, HEVC Advance Licensees can receive waivers for device royalties on HEVC software products if these software products are installed on a consumer device for which the applicable device royalty has been (or will be) paid.

For more details or questions, please contact licensing@hevcadvance.com. To request a license or for a detailed summary of the HEVC Advance licensing structure and incentive program, please visit the HEVC Advance website: http://hevcadvance.com

About HEVC Advance HEVC Advance is an independent licensing administrator company formed to lead the development, administration and management of an HEVC/H.265 patent pool for licensing essential patents. HEVC Advance provides a transparent and efficient licensing mechanism for HEVC patented technology. For more information about HEVC Advance, visit hevcadvance.com.